Finished Poster

Completed Digipak

Finished Music Video

Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

For my music video, I decided on choosing the song 'Need You Now' by the country band Lady Antebellum. My chosen artist already has a current music video for this song however after researching, there aren't many covers made of it which inspired me to run with it. My decision for using this song is due to the fact I thought I thought I'd be able to work with the story line and create a good effective music video. I feel it is quite a sad song and I really wanted to create a narrative music video which would fit with this and I planned to do so. I felt the song I chose was appropriate for this and was at a slow enough pace to create something with a sad emotion whilst also conveying the country theme in there too and the audience could relate to it. Due to producing a video with a narrative, it was essential to keep all continuity at all time, and as it was country I feel it would have looked odd to have performances or dances in because this is more a typical convention of R&B/Pop genres of music and if it were to be placed in my music video, it would have broken the codes and conventions of my country genre. It was vital to maintain the editing with long shots rather than quick cuts through to increase the emphasis on the sad theme.

Many country music videos feature the artists, for example in this video of 'Love Story' by Taylor Swift it features her and the guy she's singing about. I used this whilst also adapting it to fit around the fact that my male actor is also singing. They don't generally feature many characters because quite often there is a narrative to it which stays simple with a few characters to base the story upon. So I tried to incorporate this into my music video. Initially I thought about having many different couples singing about one another however thought this would get too confusing and narrowed it back down to keep just the two main artists in the hope that it is something my target audience can still relate to. Additionally, I thought it was important for the costume of my characters to be more updated so it is closer to today's trends but also something that looks acceptable. So I decided to dress my female artist in a night-going out dress and the male artist in a casual shirt with a jumper with coloured trousers. I thought this was appropriate for the scenes featuring together because I feel it could demonstrate the past times that they both experienced were wonderful as they're dressed up and that they used to go out together to lovely places and dress lovely. I feel it puts emphasis on the fact they had good times when they were together which my target audience could relate to.

Adding to the mise en scene, I chose to shoot in the green room at Wyke College for my main location, this is the location which features both my two artists in black and white. I thought this would be a pretty simple basic backing for them both to sing in and share their thoughts with each other because it is a story in the past. Having my female actress as the main artist, this made it quite difficult to organise shooting during college time as she isn't a student studying at Wyke. However she always agreed to meet me at Wyke to do any filming or re-shoots in the green room after college hours and during the college holidays. My male artist attends Wyke which made it fairly easy to get him to be available though it was often difficult to get them both available at the same time so this made it harder to organise any re-shoots to be taken. All together, I filmed my entire media footage in 5 different locations. I started to film my project in October and continued editing it until January. This is when I decided that I didn't like any of the footage I had taken. This was partially due to the fact I wasn't keen on how the actual scenes looked and also the footage had come out looking a bit grainy which I was really unpleased with. When deciding it was best to re shoot these scenes, I chose to change my plan for the music video as I just didn't like how it was looking and a lot of other media students in class had given me some negative feedback that they were not entirely sure what was happening.

I began my music video with both the artists sitting together to show the happiness at the start and progress through the video to see the how the couple have come apart. I feel that the first shot of my video at the piano would give off a happy vibe to my target audience allowing them to connect with it and wanting to see how it continues. A typical convention of country music is to be naturalistic and unique giving the audience something to associate with and being able to relate with the certain artist. 

The two images above show similar neutral scenes to ones that I have based my music video on to follow the typical conventions of a Country music video. In the top photo it shows the woman looking wearing a night dress ready to go out which is one of the reasons I had my artist wearing a similar costume to add the impression that the couple were just heading out. The costume for my artists was key because it had to be suitable and believable to the narrative and emotion. I chose her dress to be a dark red and black to show the contrast between the two different colours. The Red is connoting love and black connoting death or the end of something. When editing the scenes, it is not possible to see the colours of the clothes due to change in the black and white layover making it harder for the audience to take notice of these factors. 

I chose to set the background story of my music video in my house, on Hessle Foreshore, on a bus and a train. This was mainly for a neutral setting and something that looked like a typical everyday lifestyle. I decided against filming in a field because I couldn't see how I’d work that around the lyrics in the song and I didn't like the idea of putting my artist on to a field to sing about a break up. I felt like it is something that is done too many times and didn't want to repeat the general field scenarios.

The shots filmed at Hessle Foreshore were mainly shot for ‘scenery’ purposes only. I filmed the shot of the shore with the intention of giving the idea of having someone being swept away from you or having the wave symbolising a fresh start but it was quite open to interpretation for the audience to interpret how they wish. The shot of the Humber Bridge was a build up to leaving and getting out of the city. I was hoping to get a closer shot of a car driving across to get the impression of a long journey because this shot is followed by a shot of my artist taking a bus journey to get a train out of Hull which is then followed by another shot of Newcastle Bridge. I wanted to show the audience that in order to get away completely it was a matter of a very long journey.

  

When beginning my music video, I had taken two shoots until beginning to edit the first draft of my music video. Overall it has taken seven shoots to complete the whole thing leaving me with lots of unused scenes too. These shoots would often take most of a day, setting everything up and getting all props I need ready. I didn't need to use all footage because there would be a lot of footage that needed re shooting there and then due to having to forgetting lyrics etc. During the days without a camera I ensured I had made a list of things that needed doing on days when I had taken a camera out from college.  

I never faced a lot of problems; just the general issues such weather conditions, needing permission to film in places and time issues. Due to the weather conditions, this partially ruined the continuity of my music video. As some days during filming it was really sunny, or cloudy or full of rain. On the day I planned to film on the bus, the weather conditions were awful and it had decided to rain. However I feel it can work with the narrative because at that present time my artist would be feeling sad emotion which is expressed through the weather.

It then continues to a shot of the view from the train with weather that appears brighter. It isn’t amazingly sunny, just a few clouds which I think is great because I feel that this could give the intention that as she’s getting further and further away, her mood is increasing and corresponding with the weather.

When I knew that I had definitely finished filming all footage, I focused entirely on trying to finish the editing process of the music video. It was fine getting all the footage I needed, but found it trickier to actually fit them in particular areas of the music videos so they made sense with the narrative and the lyrics that were said at that exact time. I didn't stick to my storyboard at all but I’m actually glad that I didn't because I think the ideas that came to me later on worked better than ideas that I’d focused on towards the beginning of the course. This did make production a lot more difficult than if I’d initially stuck to the storyboard first and changed it around later on leaving me with plenty more time to improve it.

I’m happy that I didn't follow my storyboard because I ended up getting shots that I never would have explored with otherwise and that I actually really like within the music video. Here are some examples:

(Establishing shot) of the couple looking happy.

             

The most common convention of all music videos is having the artist’s voice in sync with the song to add to the verisimilitude. I find this effective and decided to make sure I did the same. I found that the sync of the lyrics added to the emotion of the narrative because it’s coming directly from the artist’s mouth making it easier for the audience to relate to them. Because the song I chose is sung by a band, there were also male vocals included meaning it was vital for me to definitely have a male artist alongside the female artist. The filming in the background of the main singing is solely female focused because I wanted the audience to be aware it was all happening to her and that she was the main artist for the song. I ensured all my shoots were slow and worked with the genre of the song. I could have filmed quick cuts of teenagers partying hard on a night out to show emotion but this just wouldn't have worked for the narrative meaning it had to be slow, natural and calm with a sad theme. I tried to ensure that my shots weren't extremely long as this would have been boring for a member of the audience to watch. They needed to be short enough to give an idea of what is going on for the artist and hat their story is telling. I feel that I used a lot of medium close up shots, but I did intend to differ between medium, long and close up shots to show different emotions at different time and to keep it a little more interesting for an audiences’ perspective.

            

  

Evaluation (1) by s0013065 on GoAnimate

Video Maker - Powered by GoAnimate.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Before creating my ancillary texts, I took lots and lots of photographs in my room against a plain background and also some outside against neutral, natural settings to keep with the Country genre. When researching into other ancillaries, most artists have plain backgrounds with a close up image of the artist and edit their background to how they want it. I took this research on board and opened up Photoshop CS6 to start designing my own ancillary texts. Having my main artist being female, I obviously used her on the front cover of my album to keep up with the continuity.

I tried out lots of different fonts and colours, experimented with the different photographs and explored with the positioning of everything in order to create the best finished product I could.

I am quite pleased with my finished front cover because I feel it looks simplistic but not too simplistic in that nobody would care to look at it. I maintained a clear background with a slight tint to it in the hope it would give a slight resemblance to that in the music video. I also gave a black and white effect to my artist featuring to keep with the continuity of the music video. I used a bold capital lettered greenish coloured font to title the artist’s name ‘Kristen Partridge’. I think this works well because it can still be seen clearly over the top of my artist’s grey skirt. I differed the colour slightly for the number 1 single of the album ‘Need You Now’ so that it stood out separately from the artist’s name and it was a clear differentiation.

This image shows a medium/long shot of the artist holding a guitar. There is no guitar used in the music video but you can hear that musical instrument within it. A convention of country music is having different music instruments featuring in the music video eg, piano and/or guitar. My reason for using a guitar on the front cover is to suggest that she would use it in other music videos within the album.

I wanted the inside of my digipak to be quite simple therefore decided to use screenshots from my music video so there were elements from the actual video in my digipak. I chose to use screenshots of both the artists sitting at the piano and a screenshot of the piano being played for the pictures inside because I thought they were simplistic yet elegant enough for a digipak. I decided to use a shot of the Humber Bridge with an overlap of a shot of my artist for CD number one. For the second CD, I did the same with a shot of the sea as the background and a shot of my artist overlapping that. I thought it would give a good image for the digipak whilst continuing the continuity and males them stand out. I chose not to have any text written on the CD’s as it would just not have been clear enough to read over the top of the images. I’ve kept the general theme of my digipak in black and white to keep in with the music video itself.

I really like the back cover of the album because of the simplicity. As I’d chosen to have the front cover a paler colour, I decided on having a variation and made the back black. I made the artist’s name ‘Kristen Partridge’ in a yellowish colour to ensure it had definite clarity. I chose upon a close up image for the audience to see a differentiation between the many long/medium shots that were used throughout the video. I think it also emphasis a more serious emotion instead of an upsetting emotion that is seen within the music video. For the other songs that would feature in this album, I have chosen a white font and put them in a list to keep the simple look.

For the sides of the album, I simply kept with the black colour with ‘Kristen Partridge’ and ‘Need You Now’ written in their colours that are used on the front cover.

I really wanted to create a magazine advert with similar continuity to that of my digipak to ensure it was noticeably the same artist to the audience. To do this, it was vital that I keep the colour scheme of black and white the same.

After researching into posters advertising albums, most looked quite simplistic whilst getting to the point of what they’re advertising. When designing both the digipak and the advert, I thought it best just to call the album ‘Need You Now’ as it is the number one song and it keeps it realistic and to the point of what it’s about. It’s also great because that’s the song I chose for my music video. Most magazine adverts include the artists name, an image of the artist, a review and the album itself. So I made sure to include all these things. I chose a pale colour for the background with my artist being in black and white theme. Reflecting back on this, I do not like the pale colour and wish I’d have opted to go for black as the background. I featured the text of the artist’s name and ‘Need You Now’ in the similar colours as the digipak. I included a review from a magazine that features ‘country’ genre music. The key information such as the magazine name and the website for the artist is both in red. This is just in case of the audience wanting to check them out and also shows that they want more viewers. I wanted my artist to lean on a side to show that she had a casual look about her. I feel like this is quite appealing for members of the audience rather than having a close up shot of her looking directly into the camera. The whole idea of having the website ‘www.therealkristenpartridge.com’ is to promote the artists and it gives the audience an opportunity to purchase any merchandise and other songs that they could download. Underneath the review from a music magazine I added 5 gold stars to show that it had a good rating. Without a good rating, the audience may not be as interested to go out there and listen to the album.

I also included a smaller image of the front cover of my album for the audience to be able to see. This makes it easier for them to find when going to purchase it as they’ve already seen it on the advert. 

I think my advert and digipak are really effective and work well in comparison with others. They have all the important information that would be needed to know to recognise the artist and works well with the music video in terms on continuity. What I have realised after giving my artist the name ‘Kristen Partridge’ is that within my music video, it features a shot showing her facebook under the name of ‘Kirsty Windass’ which has broken the continuity slightly. If I had more time, I would definitely correct this by re shooting it immediately.

What have you learned from my audience feedback?

I decided to conduct recordings of individuals who are within my target audience to find out their honest thoughts about my music video.

From my audience feedback, I have taken on board that for the majority of the video during the black and white effect it is a lot brighter than I had imagined. A lot of people have told me that it’s hard to see the actual faces of my artists meaning it has been hard for them to empathise with any emotion because they’ve not been able to see the emotion on their faces. To improve this I would just have to change the contrast between the colours.

Another piece of feedback was that the editing of my music video works more towards my target population. Due to the narrative and how I have chosen to demonstrate the narrative, it works for the present time and for my population in this generation.

I would personally re shoot the background narrative to improve it as I feel I rushed through to get shots without taking a lot of time to think about why I was doing this and what I was using them for. My concentration was totally towards getting it finished for the deadline. However I think a lot of the shots I used work really well with the narrative, a few do not as some people have commented in the feedback.

The filming in Hessle Foreshore was taken quite quickly and edited into the video rather soon. I’ve had a lot of feedback about those few scenes with the sea and the Humber Bridge. A lot of people have questioned the reasoning behind those few scenes as they didn’t understand the purposes for them. One of my reasons for having them in there was basically to fill a gap but after watching the video back a couple of times, I thought to myself that it could connote hidden messages about the tide coming in on a relationship or travelling across the Humber Bridge, panning across the sea to show the pass by of time but I figured it could be up to the audience how they perceived it. Unfortunately this wasn’t the case and many people were uncertain about those certain scenes.

Nevertheless, I also had positive feedback about the narrative saying how well it fitted in and a few people genuinely felt emotional watching the music video. During the editing stages of my music video, I constantly had people running back and forth telling me the most amazing thing I could possibly do to make my video better was to add a kissing scene into it. They felt during the black and white scenes of the video, it was like a teasing temptation for the audience to hold on to wait for that finale ending. However there was no finale ending for them because I originally decided against it. After constant thoughts about wanting to make my video really good, I decided that people these people were right. Maybe it did need something to conclude. Before the kissing scene was even filmed, I had a lot of feedback telling me that it kept building up to nothing which was disappointing for them so I gave in and filmed a kiss for the finale of my music video. This pleased people a lot and they kept watching my music video more and more.

Another positive I’ve had is about my artists. A lot of people have told me they really like the male artist because he adds a lot more emotion to it with his facial expressions. They like how well synced he is with the song.

I’ve had audience feedback about my ancillary texts saying that my digipak has a consistent colour scheme all the way through which can be associated with the music video very clearly. However, instead of using the pale colour it may have been better to use a nice colour eg, purple to enhance the whole image and make it look nice on the eye for the audience.

Another piece of feedback is to create a better design for the CD’s as the idea of two screenshots on top of each other. It could be a good idea to have a blank bold colour which bold font written on top with the artist’s name and album title. I think this could be a much better idea as it seems more simplistic and still gives a clear impression of what it is.

I have been told that the font is good, as it looks plain bold and simple. It looks like it’s just straight to the point and is clear for people to read. Nobody thought it was boring and just thought of it as any other album cover.

The feedback for my digipak in comparison with the magazine advert was quite negative. Personally, I am unhappy with the editing I’ve done on my artist on Photoshop because I found it slightly tricky to blur the edges as it didn’t even look sharp at all. I feel as though it looks rushed and too smudgy. I have been told it looks like there’s still a lot of room on the advertisement which could be filled with some more interesting facts about my artist.

A lot of people like the golden stars I have used for a star rating and have told me it looks quite official which I’m pleased with and also that I have used the album cover within my advert too towards the bottom right corner to show the audience what it looks like. People have commented on this as good because it gives the audience a chance to see what the album cover looks like so they are able to purchase it.

However, a few people have stated that it only slightly resembles that of the digipak and music video as the colours are just a tad different but I agree. If I had more time I would definitely change the colours on both the digipak and magazine advertisement and the font on the advert looks slightly different to me so I would look about changing that also.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

It was a fundamental part of creating my music video to use technology. In order to meet all the essential requirements of my brief, it was vital that I used many different media technologies. One of the main pieces of technology that was needed was the internet. This allowed me to carry out all my research and create my online portfolio on Blogger.com. This is where I was able to keep all my production plans, any risks that I needed to be aware of, rough drafts and edits and all finished pieces.

Planning for my music video, I printed out storyboard sheets. I used these to draw each shot that I planned to film. After doing this, I scanned in each sheet to the computer and cut each shot individually, placed them into an order of the correct sequence onto Windows Movie Maker, I added the music that I would be using for my music video and edited the times of each shot to ensure it would be to the correct degree of accuracy as it could possibly could be. This enabled me to see how it would work if I was to film each shot exactly how I had pre planned it. It was a massive help because it had shown me whether or not I was going to like it being filmed this way or not.

For the problems that I started to encounter during the beginning of filming my music video, I used a website called goanimate.com. This was amazing because I could put down all my problems in the form of a media conversation rather than type them out.

In order for me to see what my target audience prefer, I set up a poll on the side of my blog. I have received quite a lot of responses which has given me quite a reliable sample to base my music video on. It has enabled me to see what features my target audience prefer in a music video eg, performance or narrative etc. The results have shown that my target population prefer a performance based music video with 65% closely followed with narrative with 55%. The majority of my target population are females with 85% and males with only 15% within the age range of 16-19 85%. Therefore I knew my music video would be aimed mostly towards 16-19 year old females.

 This was an important factor to consider when creating the narrative music video as females show a lot more emotion so I needed to work with this so I could ensure it had a lot more emotional content.

Having created a poll, it has helped me identify the fact my target audience are within college age range which has already given me an insight into possible shops and places they would consume their music and the type of networking sites they would possibly use.

To create the actual music video, I used software called Adobe Premier Pro CS6 on an editing suite. I was able to upload all my footage onto the editing suite using a memory card that was used in the video camera during filming. I created my own folder on this editing suite so I knew where all my work was. I uploaded all footage into this folder and exported them into my Adobe Premier Pro folder. I would label this first upload ‘shoot1’ to help me organise what and how many shoots I have done. I would be able to alter the colour and brightness of my video clips using the Adobe Premier Pro and it was quite easy to work. However if I was ever unsure about how to use something, I would make sure to ask either subject teacher or the technology advisor. Some shots would appear quite subdue, so in order to improve this I would be able to improve the quality of the lighting making it look still as natural as possible. At the beginning of the academic year of this subject, we were given an introduction task to create a 30 second music video just imitating the current music video we were using. We were in a group of 5 with people having specified jobs to do. I feel as though this gave me such a confidence boost as I felt so much confidence when using the editing suite before. So when it came to using it solely on my own, I was comfortable with it instead of being terrified.  

In order to get all my recorded feedback, drafts and final music video onto my blog, I initially uploaded them to YouTube. The reasons for doing this are that you are able to see how many views you’ve had on each video. It also enables any public audience member to anonymously post feedback to you without feeling judged by you. One major problem I faced with YouTube is that the song I used had been copyrighted by its owner meaning I wasn’t entitled to use it without permission so a lot of my first drafts were unsuccessful in making it to YouTube. Therefore I had to show people my drafts on my editing suite for them to give feedback later on causing a lot of time consumption.

I used my Samsung Galaxy Ace phone to record all my feedback; this didn’t need to have good clarity as the feedback was only going to be beneficial for me to take on board. It was a simple process of uploading this from my phone onto the computer and then to YouTube so that wasn’t a problem and didn’t take too much time.

For my ancillary texts, I took all my photographs on a Fujifilm 12 megapixel camera hoping to get the best image I possibly could. Not all my photographs came out in great condition due to the lighting of the outdoor photos. But that wasn’t an issue as it wasn’t necessary to use all photos. After taking the photos and uploading them onto my blogger profile. I went straight to Adobe Photoshop CS6 where I edited the images that I specifically chose. This is where I added all the text onto the photo too. With already having experience with this software using it in my first year AS Media Studies course, it wasn’t a shock to my system. I felt quite comfortable using it making it less time consuming to work. The basic tools to use were the ‘selection tool’ in order to cut around my artist eliminating any unwanted background imagery and the ‘blur’ tool to smoothen the edges around my artist to limit the choppiness around her.

After getting the desired parts of the photo all cut out, the next thing to do was adjust the brightness and contrasting levels of the photograph to create a more effective and professional look. To get rid of any unwanted marks or spots on the skin or to just give it more of a smooth skin look, I used the ‘spot healing’ tool to give it a more natural look. To create and change the colour of any text added was fairly simple. I would enter my text and transform it to change the size rather than change it by font size. To change the colour I would use the ‘paint’ tool.

Overall, the whole process of making a music video was a lot trickier than I expected. However I have really enjoyed learning all the new skills. It has taught me a lot of things, things that I can use in everyday life as well as for the media studies course. I have learnt to manage my time a lot better and with a lot more pre planning I could have produced something better with time to spare for improving. Yet, this time I ended up leaving things later than I should have done. Another thing I have learnt is not to have so much dependency on things because there are things in life that you just cannot control. If the weather is how you would like it to be then ensure that you do the filming that day instead of leaving it for later to end up having weather you didn’t want for continuity reasons. Also, you can never depend on your artists as they have their own lives and when needing them for something as important as this I have to expect that they will sometimes let me down which cannot be helped.

Thus, I am enthralled with the work I have put into my music video because I put a lot of effort into it and I feel I have met the brief clearly with the narrative of my music video. Obviously, I would change a lot of things if given more time or if I was told to do the same again I’d change it but at this given time I think it is a good standard for the time I have been given.

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